


in Ishval

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Biracial Character, Culture, Desert, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Politics, Returning Home, a bit of miles in ishval to ease the soul, kind of me exploring the character.......kind of a writing exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 16:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Miles in Ishval, rediscovering pieces of himself.





	in Ishval

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MossFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MossFox/gifts).

> written for a sweet Miles-loving friend <3

Miles tended to court only the most benevolent of endeavors. He joined the military to be a man of purpose, stayed in the military to be a man of conviction, and aspired to change the military to be a man of righteousness. Not the Roy Mustang brand of righteousness, which came with sharp eyes and flamboyant displays of justice and cunning, but Miles’s own quiet, reserved brand. He shared it with few people, namely Scar and General Armstrong, and held it very close and very dear to his battered Ishvalan heart. His was humble and bathed in empathy, not guilt or responsibility. Nothing tied Miles to Ishval but his own blood and, well, he supposed a many number of other things.

Corporeal as Ishval was, it was still overshadowed by foggy, nearly unreachable memories in Miles’s mind. He used to close his eyes and imagine the sand, the sheer depth of it, and the color of everyone’s skin, deep and lush, and the mud-roofs and the endless, relentless sun, and all the red clay and the wheat sky and grit in your mouth when you spoke. When he was a boy, he would lie awake at night and play in places he’d never played before — sand dunes larger than the largest buildings, watering holes deeper than the oceans, on camel’s backs and in chicken coops and over piles of stones the size of houses.

He was seven when he first visited the land of sand. He could remember quite clearly the day he set foot in Ishval, his toes burning and the soles of his feet going hot through his sandals. Back then it was a three-day train ride from Central to the borderline in the east, and then there were checkpoints where military police would examine you and your family and, sometimes, your family dog before you could cross over into your glittering tan homeland. And that first time was the scariest, as Miles recalled. Military police were very formal-looking, a lot of them had neat, close-cropped hair and guns larger than Miles’s torso and eyes bluer than any water. They spoke using military-like words Miles had never heard before, and they stuck their tidy heads into Miles’s car and stared into his face, asking his name and other things like his birthday and where he was from.

He placed his feet on the top of the searing sands that first day. There were no dunes the size of buildings; no stones the size of houses. But there were many people like him there, that looked like him and talked in that strange tongue his extended family sometimes did, and he learned of their home and their customs, and he took a bit of all of it back to Central with him. That, he realized a decade later, would be injurious. For the military police were tallying up their prejudice even then.

It took coaxing from Scar to dig that particular infection out; to cull the anxiety in Miles’s mind. He waded through the cognitive dissonance -- the interplay of what was and what used to be -- and returned to his culture years later like a vampire enters a home: with permission from those who occupy it.

It started slow, like he was a pot boiling on a stove. The little flame under his ass lit and flickered, barely there, barely perceptible, but it built beneath him. His first month back in Ishval was eye-opening as it was grueling. Days started before sun up on the sands with Scar, sweating into the turning grains, plotting them with dots of precious, precious liquids. They rolled stones and did push-ups; they sparred like real Ishvalan soldiers, according to Scar; they removed their sandals — no boots in the mornings, Scar had instructed Miles — and closed their eyes to the sunrise, feeling the fire in their chests and measuring their breaths, the sand forcing its way between their toes, coarse and dry. 

It was during one particular morning that Miles ventured carefully into topics he wasn’t sure he had any claim to, but he’d never let uncertainty stop him before and so he wasn’t going to let it stop him now. If he had, he’d have left the military years ago when his peers were sneering at him from across the room, bumping his shoulders in the halls, kicking his feet out from under him in the mess hall. He took a breath after having landed hard in the packed sand. It stuck to the sweat on his face and mixed to form a sand-like paste over his skin. He attempted to wipe it away but only managed to smear it. 

“Scar,” he said, and was surprised at his own tone of voice, small and tired. He hadn’t felt like either of those things, but they worked their way out of him of their own accord. Scar had been walking in circles, pacing against the orange-black early morning sky, but now he stopped and turned, throwing his hard gaze at Miles. “I’m Ishvalan only in blood, not by birth. The others can sense that, I think.”

Scar folded his bulging arms over his chest.

“And what of it?” he challenged. Everything Scar said tended toward a challenge. He wasn’t challenging others, not one-on-one, but he made a point of coaxing people into challenging themselves. Many times, when someone came to him with a question, Scar would answer with a question of his own. This kind of Socratic questioning entirely evaded Miles. At first, he thought Scar was only quite good at avoiding. Maybe he didn’t like to answer questions, or perhaps he didn’t have any answers, or it was possible that he wasn’t very fond of talking (this, Miles knew, was fact and not just an inference). But Scar kept up his maieutic method, fervent in his quest to engage others in a deeper understanding of themselves. Miles understood only after having watched a young man come to Scar seeking advice about his sorry state of health. _What prayers should I say?_ he pleaded._ How often? Ishvalla does not listen – has he forsaken me? _The man was scrawny and filthy, his cheeks sunken and teeth yellowed; his eyes watered and, as he spoke, filled with tears. His request for advice was easy enough for Scar to fill, but each question the man posed was met with another, more expansive question, and eventually the man departed in tears, sobbing into his hands about a latent trauma he’d neglected since his days as a boy.

Miles turned his gaze from the sunrise to his friend. He worried about what it would feel like to stumble away like that young man did, shoulders curled in like he was preparing to roll over the ground. He didn’t imagine that he was ready for something like that.

“I suppose nothing,” he said.

He came to his feet. His weight shifted on the uneven ground -- one foot digging deeper into the sand than the other -- and again tried to cleanse his face of the sand-sweat. He only ended up exfoliating further, the tiny granules ripping away at his leathery and sun-kissed skin.

Scar’s eyes did a small somersault in his head. It was clear that he knew where Miles had been going with his venture, and that he didn’t find it amusing. He found, probably, that Miles was being a bit too fretful and possibly a tad insecure. It wasn’t hard to be either of those things when you’d lived your life wedged between two worlds. Miles had always felt like something of a doorstop, half in and half out of whichever side of the door better suited him in the moment. It never mattered which he chose: Miles couldn’t let the door close.

Scar grunted. It came from his throat and not his gut – a habit he picked up after coming back to Ishval. Before, he was eerily quiet, like Miles was walking beside a corpse. Now, though, he grunted like he was clearing sand from his throat but really, he was perfecting a new kind of communication. The gut-grunts were anger or annoyance, and the throat-grunts were, as General Armstrong would put it, calling bullshit. Scar leaned into the throat grunts more often than not these days, especially as politician after political figure after military man came knocking on Ishval’s door looking to make amends or, worse, looking to trade. For what, Miles could never imagine. Ishval had nothing that Amestris hadn’t already taken. Asking for more was like trying to drain a lake after you’ve scooped all the water out with a bucket.

“Scar,” Miles said. Miles knew Scar’s little game. He had no interest in playing it. He said again: “Scar.”

It was after the Promised Day that Scar had requested that people stop calling him Scar. _I have no name_, he’d told General Armstrong. To most people that was true. Scar was known as a holy man. When he returned to Ishval, he endeavored to fill the space his brother’s death left behind, name or no name. He wanted to atone for the things he’d done, and he felt that the name Scar was a blight on his person; on his past and on his soul. _Call me anything you’d like_, he’d said.

And Miles liked Scar. It was what he called the holy man in private. Where everyone else referred to Scar as Holy Man or some version of Priest, Miles had Scar. It felt right that he keep this man’s name for himself. Miles was of the opinion that someone needed to. Because the Scar that was had laid the groundwork for the Scar that is. And Scar never corrected him, anyway. That name was a line drawn between the two of them – one that connected instead of bisected. It felt useless to try and sever it.

Scar had already turned his back to Miles. The sun was rising ever higher in the sky – carving out its place in the still black-blue night, orange and yellow seeping into the dark. The light outlined Scar’s figure, throwing his back into shadow, and he stretched against it, all the lines of muscle deepening to caverns. His words were warm and faintly philosophic. “This is your home, Miles.”

❂

Miles handled the phone like a child. He cradled it in his palm against his cheek, and he dangled it between two fingers an inch from his ear, and then placed it on the desk and laid his ear over it. It was strange to think that a person could get uncomfortable while holding a phone but here he was, changing positions like he was trying to find the sweet spot in a chair or a cot.

It didn’t help that there was a general on the other end of the line. While her voice was soothing in a way, it was also domineering. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand just as well as it lulled his heart into a slow rhythm.

She had just flung herself into describing the recent happenings at the wall – Mustang had been to visit, his tagalong being the only positive about that, and the snow was lighter this year, fewer icicles on the outer wall, less for the Briggs grunts to do. Oh, and Vato Falman was taking leave to be married, and he wished Miles well, his new fiancé was quite enjoyable despite her questionable taste in scrawny, wrinkly old men – when she suddenly stopped. She said, “You’re awfully quiet, Miles.”

Miles cleared his throat and righted himself in the creaking wooden chair. Its legs were engulfed by sand, a quarter of them sucked into the ground by the churning granules. His desk sat lopsided over a folded tarpaulin. It was lumpy, doughy like cake batter. Miles sometimes had to stand and place his palms over the top to force the legs down so that they would sit as close to even as possible. The ground was always shifting, however, and so the effort would be lost a day later. He slid his boots over the tarpaulin, the rubber skidding over it. He heard each individual grain of sand scrape and scream over the tarpaulin’s blue surface.

“I have nothing to say, General.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Miles’s conversation with Scar, while hours old according to the steady beat of the afternoon sun, was still occupying a sizable amount of space in Miles’s mind. He hadn’t been able to shake it. _This is your home_ felt like a declaration made in such certainty that there could be no room for debate over how much of that statement was fact, and how much existed to placate Miles’s own insecurities.

He imagined the building-sized sand dunes and the watering holes as deep as the oceans. He thought of the M.P. as he’d peered into Miles’s young face, his mouth moving, casting questions out like a fishing line. Trying to catch and never release.

“Bullshit,” the general retorted, not unkindly. Or perhaps it was unkindly. The general was very good at masking kindness within unkindness. Like hiding a small box inside of a larger one. “Tell that Scar he ought to work harder to keep you busy. You rust when idle.”

Miles had to turn the corner of his lip up to that.

“Yes, sir.” He said.

**Author's Note:**

> comments & kudos are cool~ especially on this piece because it was quite different than my usual.


End file.
